Somebody asked me today how the why OF the typewritten keyboard is laid out the way it is.

Well, it has quite a history, I’ll tell of you.

Most of us know it as the QWERTY keyboard.   It is the most popular one around today.  I just like to say it.  QWERTY, QWERTY.

And of course, the name comes from reading the first six keys appearing on the top left letter row of the keyboard (Q, W, E, R, T, and Y) from left to right.

But who in the heck came up with this crazy configuration which allows our fingers to fly across the keyboard.  Well, it was a dude named  Christopher Latham Sholes.

Yep.  Good ol’ Chris Sholes.  He was a newspaper editor from Milwaukee….. in the early 1870s.  ( A politician too.  But his newspaper gig prompted the keyboard.)

In October 1867, Sholes filed a patent application for his early writing machine he developed with the assistance of his friends Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soulé.  Are you bored yet?  Well… You can blame it on Jan Deters.

ANYWAY….. The very first was sold to Remington in 1873.   But it was WAY different.  It sort of hand a piano keyboard layout and looked like this:
– 3 5 7 9 N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
2 4 6 8 . A B C D E F G H I J K L M

The thing of it was… it didn’t work very well because the keys kept getting jammed up.   When someone typed….. the metal type bars would clash and lock if two neighboring keys were hit in succession.  And when I say… locked up… I mean LOCKED up.  Like Alcatraz.

So.  They had to figure out how to get around this.  They started shifting letters around so that popular combos like “th” and “st” weren’t right on top of one another.

Are you board yet?  Again.  Blame it on Jan Deters.
But I will continue.

Old Chris was relentless.  He kept at it.  Pecking away at it… if you will.

Finally, Chris and his buddies ironed out all the hitches, and the final deal became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878.  Sholes died in 1890… not long after the thing was finished.  He had TB.  That’s what killed him.

And that….  my Typewriter-Fan-Friends….  is the deal for the QWERTY board.  More or less.

Now me…..  I just like to waddle around the room.  Sort of like a duck.  Then…. in a real low voice…. I say QWERTY, QWERTY, QWERTY.

It just makes me happy.  And wouldn’t you know it…. the next day.. I type faster than ever.

But now.  HERE  is what I want to know.  Why is a Spelling Bee called a Bee?  Bee’s buzz.  And.  Ducks go qwerty, qwerty,  qwwwwerty.

I think the contest should be called a Spelling Duck.  For sure.

 If you want to be happy, be.  — Leo Tolstoy